


Starting a Thing

by allheadybooks



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: F/F, Female Characters, First Time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-05
Updated: 2011-04-05
Packaged: 2017-10-18 21:06:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/193288
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allheadybooks/pseuds/allheadybooks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kono's always been good at talking about this stuff, over beers with a surfing buddy, in the car on the way to her apartment with whatever local guy she picked to come home with her. She doesn't know what to say now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starting a Thing

**Author's Note:**

> Things my girlfriend suggested while I was plotting this story: "They get caught in an explosion in a mayonnaise factory, and have to wrestle a bunch of surfer girls in bikinis for the key that unlocks the factory." That's not the direction that I went here, for better or for worse.

"Wow," Kono says, the pads of her fingers tracing the line between green China and orange Russia, skirting the edge of a photograph of Wo Fat. It's a full-on, obsesso-stalker psych-eval collage. Security stills, decoded documents; coastlines, corpses. She lets her hand drop.

Jenna's biting the inside of her cheek. It doesn't look conscious--one side of her mouth pouts a little more than the other, her jaw is clenched, little things you wouldn't see if you weren't paying attention. She crosses her arms, pseudo-casual, and flicks the back of one hand at the corkboard.

"This is obviously not the sum total of my research," she says. "This is just, you know. Motivational."

"Uh-huh," Kono says.

"Anyway," Jenna says, "I've got some backup drives I should really be storing at your office--although, believe me, the important stuff is in a safety-deposit box--the security at this fleabag is for shit." A suitcase zips open and she unpacks what sounds like clothes and a tangle of electrical wires.

There's a picture tucked into the plastic edging of the board that catches Kono's eye--because it's older, because it's developed film instead of a computer printout, because the corner is folded like it's been handled roughly. She plucks it, flips it over. The back is blank. It's more or less like the other crime scene photos on Jenna's vigilante corkboard: three vics, two male, one female, all face-down with duct-taped wrists, gunshot wounds to the head. Expansive blood splatter.

"That's--" And then Jenna cuts herself off and just takes the photo out of Kono's hand. Her short nails brush the backs of Kono's fingers. Once she's got the picture, though, she doesn't look at it, just shakes it a couple times like a Poloroid, or maybe that's her hand shaking. Kono gets a really intense vibe all of a sudden, a cracked feeling to the air, and she steps back on instinct. Her boots come up against the leg of the table, so she moves to sit, again on instinct, and knocks a box over with her ass.

"Sorry!" she says, and turns to straighten things up. The first box--Lucky Charms--has knocked over several others--nondairy creamer, instant oatmeal, and generic microwave mac and cheese. Total dorm room food. There's a bowl, too, one little plastic bowl and a plastic spoon, sad, sad, sad.

"No," Jenna says, "I'm sorry." She's got her left hand cupped over her forehead and her right still holds the photo. The creases between her mouth and nose are deep; she's probably younger than Kono, but tell that to her worry lines. "That's not a picture I usually let anyone see, is all."

"Is it, uh," Kono asks, because she's not stupid, "personally motivational?"

Jenna sighs. "McGarrett probably didn't tell you," she says. "Wo Fat had my fiancée killed. That's her. That's Siri."

"Oh," Kono says, but she knows how to handle this. She's in a dangerous line of work, her whole family is in a dangerous line of work. Everybody knows somebody who died young, for no reason. "I'm sorry."

"She was, uh, also CIA. Special forces. She was pretty," and Jenna smiles with something fond, so she's through the grief enough for that at least, "did a lot of hooker jobs, plastic heels and a gun in her purse."

"Wow," Kono says. She thinks about the photo again, not as vics, but as Jenna's lover and her team; it's brutal. If she were Jenna's shrink she would confiscate that picture. Jenna's still whipping it between her fingers nervously. "Here," Kono says, and takes a chance, reaches out with a hand that is, she sees now, also shaking, very slightly. Jenna eyes her, sharp-browed. It's not a sexy moment at all.  Too much sadness for that. But Kono wants to put a thumb between Jenna's eyebrows and work the furrows loose. And there's something sexy about that, or attached to that, that Kono files away to think about later.

Then Jenna drops her eyes, holds the picture out for Kono to take, and now she's not so sure that thought is going to stay filed away. Jenna's eyelashes are dark on her cheeks, her lips soft and twitching lightly at the left corner, vulnerable--and Kono takes the photograph and sets it face down on the desk behind her.

"Hey," she says. She settles her left hand on Jenna's shoulder. It's a familiar gesture; she always gets stuck with orphaned kids, crying widows, bereaved fathers, that's the rookie's job every time. Jenna scrubs a hand harshly across her eyes, crosses her arms, looks blankly over at the window.

"Please," Jenna says, "don't feel obligated--"

"Hey," Kono says again. "Chill. Nobody's obligated here, okay?" She squeezes Jenna's shoulder, crumpling the t-shirt under her hands a little. It says 'Intercollegiate Women's Lacrosse, 2001' across the chest. Mainland sport.

She takes a second to read the situation. It's not a natural talent for Kono, but she's learned quick doing police work. Some people need to be listened to, others reassured; she's got a number of gentle smiles she could pull out, and a few grimaces of echoing pain. Jenna's face is unreadable. Her arms uncross and fall to her sides. Her shoulder rolls gently under Kono's hand, tense in a new way, and her eyes blacken, shifting from porous grief to some new and impenetrable fierceness.

"Tell me if I'm reading this wrong," Jenna says. Her left hand comes up to mirror Kono's, landing on the shoulder of her henley, and her right snakes up between them to cup her face. Jenna's hands are small, white, and delicate, the hands of a woman who works indoors, with her brain. Kono can feel them cool on the sensitive skin below her jaw and through the thin cotton of her shirt. Jenna watches her just long enough to see if she's going to protest. It's a weird frozen moment, the both of them still, and Kono unable to figure out, if there even is a decision to be made here, what it is and which side she should come down on.

Whatever happens in that moment, Jenna sees. She nods, and then they're kissing, mouths hot together and moving, Jenna's fingers combing roughly into Kono's hair. No way, Kono thinks, you don't get to run this show; and her own hands fall to Jenna's hips and slide up under her t-shirt, soft belly and heaving ribs, the stiff wire edge of a bra. She deepens the kiss. Jaws hinge open, tongues strike together. Kono slides her palm across the textured surface of Jenna's bra and finds flesh, tucks her fingers over the edge of the cup, drags one nail across a nipple.

"Ah," Jenna says against her mouth, "oh, Jesus," and then everything speeds up, they can't get their jeans off fast enough.

Jenna gets naked first; she shoves Kono to the bed, pushy but playful, and hauls her shirt up to get at her breasts. The bra is a formality, really; Kono's breasts are small, so it's more about coverage than containment, just two triangles of cloth and an elastic band. Jenna tugs it aside and it snaps against Kono's collarbones.

"Ow," she says, but Jenna's mouth is on her nipple. Those are teeth, too, she's pretty sure, harsh and scraping. She moans. When she gets her shit together enough to move again, she flips Jenna and gets a thigh between her legs, grinding. She thinks her brain might be offline; ever since they started she's been thinking with her hands, her mouth, her cunt. She shifts to rub herself on Jenna's hip and they rock like that for a minute. Then, in a move that would be brave if she weren't going on instinct here, Kono works her right hand down between them and gets the tips of two fingers against Jenna's clit.

Jenna's hips buck, her abs clench, the point of her chin jerks up against Kono's neck. Kono circles her fingers, feeling Jenna harden and throb, and there's a weird thrill of satisfaction there like a hard cock under her palm through a guy's jeans. She circles again, the way she touches herself, but lighter, listening to Jenna's hips, the pull of her heels dragging the sheets against the mattress.

Then Jenna growls low in her throat, frustrated, and she's knocking Kono's hand away and twisting to grind up against her own fingers. She clutches the back of Kono's shirt, a fist of damp pink cotton, and comes sharp and rolling as if it hurts her, as if the shock of it is a kind of pain.

There's a moment of panting silence . Then Jenna rolls Kono onto her back, and they're kissing again, Jenna's hand sliding down her belly, and while Kono is super super horny right here in this moment, she is also nervous, because this is why she does fuckbuddies, not casual sex. There is a long, complicated list of what she likes and dislikes: rough but not too rough, head but not until she comes, penetration but not until she's already had one orgasm. She's always been good at talking about this stuff, over beers with a surfing buddy, in the car on the way to her apartment with whatever local guy she picked to come home with her. She doesn't know what to say now. Maybe it'll be okay, she thinks; those were all guys, maybe it's different with women, but that thought escapes pretty quickly; if she's been putting off the "someone I work with" and "someone who is grieving" freakouts until later, the "someone who has a cunt" freakout can also wait.

But Jenna doesn't ask, or fumble awkwardly, or wait for Kono's guidance. She combs the tips of her fingers through the trimmed black tangle of Kono's pubic hair, cool on the skin underneath, then slides her hand down to drag against her inner thighs, rough enough that it doesn't tickle. Kono spreads her legs and waits, and is surprised to feel Jenna's hand next on her wrist.

"Show me," she says, tucking Kono's fingers against the join of her thigh, "I want to see you."

Kono can't help a sigh at the first touch of her clit. I've done this before, she tells herself, people have seen this before, but it feels helplessly exposed, a first time like _the_ first time. She's hot under her own fingers. Jenna's hand drags a light pressure over her hips and belly, up her ribs and around the edge of a bad impact bruise from their last case, and then her cool fingers are cupped around Kono's breast and stroking, pinching a nipple. Jenna's fingers, her own fingers--the electricity is shocking between them, bouncing back and forth and resonating in every wire of her body, and this is fast for her but she knows it's coming so she finds Jenna's mouth with her own and bites down hard on her lower lip while she shudders and jerks against her own hand, whip-crazy and shaking.

"Oh," she says, coming down, pleased to find she hasn't babbled anything embarrassing--she can be loud when she feels comfortable, but comfortable this isn't. Her bra is still hiked up around her collarbones; that might be one leg of her jeans over there, draped across the TV. She does the how-fast-can-I-get-out-of-here inventory and calculates: about five minutes, give or take. She doesn't think Jenna's a cuddler.

Jenna beats her to the punch. "I'll see you tomorrow?" she says. "You can take those drives to HQ with you when you go, just let me pack them all." She doesn't bother getting dressed, just swings her legs over the side of the bed and pulls a padded lunchbox out of her suitcase. Kono takes the moment to find her underwear and yank it on. It sticks where she's sticky, at her cunt and the rub of her inner thighs, and she cringes a little but just pulls her jeans on and hopes for the best.

"Here," Jenna says, handing her the lunchbox full of tech. She's half-dressed now; clearly she found her briefs and T-shirt somewhere, but her bra is MIA. She looks--Kono wants to think "hot"; and she does look hot, her lip still red from Kono's teeth, but there's something weird and blank about her again. "See you," she says, reaching for her laptop, and Kono knows dismissal when she sees it.

Out in the hall, her boots in one hand and the tech in the other, she thinks: that was way less than five minutes.

*****

Kono's brain comes back online on the way back to the office, and it makes up for lost time by ticking nonstop while she drives, while she and Chin stake out a trendy upscale strip club, while she grabs a well-earned burger and heads home, while she lies in her empty double bed with the windows open listening to a couple of local girls fight about who was supposed to watch whose purse at the club, and whose fault it is it got snatched.

She just lets it hum, without plugging into any one thought in particular, but by morning it's sorted itself into actual questions. Am I queer now, or whatever? while she knocks one left hook after another into the heavy bag at her gym; is she expecting this to be a regular thing? on her post-workout run; do I want this to be a regular thing? rubbing the last of Jenna's smell out of her skin with apricot body scrub; and, worst of all, as she buttons her jeans and shrugs on a jersey vest over her t-shirt, was this even about me?

But no. Kono remembers the photograph, blonde hair under the blood. Different coloring, different races, probably different body types; wherever Jenna's head was yesterday, at least her body had stayed with Kono.

Which doesn't answer any of the other questions. She sits in her car outside HQ for five full minutes, drumming along to one song and then another on the radio, but when she finally sucks it up to go inside Jenna isn't even there. And Jesus, for completely casual random non-verbal sex this is turning out to be really not casual at all.

*****

She sees Jenna once that day, through the window into Steve's office. She's wearing a button-down and blazer with jeans, sitting on a bare patch of Steve's desk, with one knee drawn up to her chest and the heel of her cowboy boot braced on the edge. They're arguing about something. Steve pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and shouts "Do I need to remind you--" before taking a deep breath and lowering his voice enough that Kono can't hear what he's saying. She's not listening after that, anyway, not once she sees Jenna's face: hard and smooth like totally still water, like something that could fracture sharp at any moment. She tucks her chin down to her knee for a moment, then jabs it back up hard and shouts something back at Steve.

"Cuz," Chin says, "give 'em some privacy, okay? I've got these mug shots sorted by height and ink, but I could use an extra set of eyes to find our guy."

"He wanted privacy, he should have put some fucking walls on his office," Kono mutters. Her heart slows a little once she takes her eyes off Jenna, though. She takes a long deep breath and scrolls through the mugshots.

*****

"Danny," Kono says, twirling her beer in a physical question mark, "have you ever been, like, attracted to somebody you had to work with?"

"What?" he shouts, and sets his own bottle down hard enough to splash beer across his wrist and forearm.

"Relax," Kono says, "I'm not talking about the Steve thing, chill."

"What Steve thing?" he asks, wiping his hand on a bar napkin, "which one of the ridiculous number of Steve things are we even talking about?"

"Relax," she says again, and this is beer number three for him, but he's got some kind of haole disease that makes him incurably tense. Though it's not like she has a lot of room to talk, lately; she keeps glancing at the door as if Jenna's pale pointed face is going to suddenly appear and whisk her off for a passionate night of fucking and emotional confessions. Yeah, right.

"What are we talking about?" he asks.

"Nothing," she says, and looks at the door, again.

"No way, nuh-uh," Danny says, "that was a 'my friend has this problem' kind of question if I ever heard one, and I don't know if you've met me but I am a Williams, we are good at talking about feelings. Shoot." He sits back and sips his beer, watching her, like a dare.

"Oh, whatever," she says, and drops her forehead to the sticky surface of the table. "What the fucking fuck, my God," she mutters, into an old beer spill and somebody's runic initials.

"Spill, Kalakaua. I will beat this out of you if I have to. Well, unless you beat back, then I might give up. I do fear some things in life and your roundhouse kick is one of them. But, correct me if I'm wrong, I think you want to talk about it."

"I have this thing," she sighs, lifting her head, "with this person, and we have to work together and it sucks, okay?"

"Kono, I know everybody you work with," Danny says. "Do not play the name game with me. Is it Steve? Tell me it's not Steve."

"It's not Steve," she says.

"Um," Danny says, after a pause, "if it's Chin, I don't--I just don't want to know about it, okay, I know I pushed you to tell me but--"

"It's not Chin, Danny, Jesus, we're blood related," Kono says.

Danny's eyebrows furrow. "Max?" he asks. "Wait, not Max, forget I said that. It's not one of our HPD contacts, is it? No, that wouldn't be that weird." He looks at her for a long moment. "It's not--it's not me, is it?"

"No," she says. "Danny. It's not you." She puts her palms against her temples and looks down at the table, willing him to figure it out so that she doesn't have to _say_ it, please, Danny--

". . . Agent Kaye?" he asks, tentative. "You have a thing for Agent Kaye?"

"Not for," she says. "With."

"Oh, wow," Danny says. "That's--complicated, I guess." He loosens his tie a little more, until the knot hangs around the second button of his shirt.

"No," she says, "the complicated part is--I'm not sure if we're starting a thing, you know, or what. I am totally in the dark here."

"Well, tell me about it," Danny says, and puts his elbows on the table, fingers laced, as if he has to pin his hands down to keep his mouth shut.

"It just . . . happened. I was comforting her, and I didn't think it was a big deal but then there was this weird vibe and then we were making out. And so help me god, if you make a girl-on-girl joke--"

"No," Danny says, and his voice is very calm and soft. "No way. I just--you were comforting her? What about?"

"Her girlfriend was murdered," Kono says, and she hears the weird, comical hysteria in her own voice. "By Wo Fat. Her fiancée, I mean. Her fiancée was murdered by Wo Fat and we were standing there looking at _the crime scene photograph_ , Danny, it was depressing and terrible and then somehow it turned into sex."

"Wow," Danny says, like it's all he's got at the moment. "Well. Good for you, I guess."

"Shut up," she says, but knocks his empty beer bottle with her own. The bar is starting to fill up for the night, which means it's time for them to settle their tabs and take off. It's Danny's weekend with Grace, she knows, so he'll be up at the crack of dawn to pick her up. Kono's lucky he agreed to a post-work beer today. It's what she needed, to talk to somebody about this, to get it out of her head and into the real world. She can take it from here.

"Hey, Kono," Danny says. He pats her on the forearm, gently and platonically. "Figure out what you want and go for it, okay? Don't just drop this, not if you don't want to. Ball's in your court here. Metaphorically. Whatever."

"Yeah," Kono says, "thanks."

They're standing side by side at the bar, signing their credit card receipts, when Danny finally cocks his head and says, "Kono?"

"What?" she says, trying to figure the tip on two beers and a basket of fries.

"What Steve thing?"

*****

Ball's in my court, Kono thinks, but it's a weird image, so she lets it go quick. Jenna's got her laptop sitting on the office computer, sending files back and forth with a flick of her fingertips on the screen. It's midday on a weekend, so she's not dressed for work, just wearing jeans and the cowboy boots with a t-shirt. Kono scrubs her palms against the waffle-cotton of her henley--not a conscious choice, but an appropriate one.

"Jenna," she says, walking up and dropping a hand on her elbow. Bare skin on bare skin is like a spark after three days of skirting around each other, leaving a room's worth of space between them.

"What," Jenna says, not looking up. She hoiks her glasses up her nose like a geek and squints with exaggerated concentration.

"Jenna," Kono says again, and rubs her thumb gently along callous and bone and up, up to the soft sweep of her inner arm.

"What," Jenna says, "I'm working." She doesn't shrug Kono off, though, and she's not really working anymore, her hands are hanging still over the screen. It's so weird, in this moment, that she's tasted this woman's skin, knows what she looks like in the silent howl of orgasm.

"I'm not sorry," Kono says. "I'm really not. If you're sorry you should tell me, but I'm not."

"Oh," Jenna says, quietly. "I'm--not sorry, exactly."

"Then what?" Kono asks. Jenna huffs a small breath, flicks a document folder across the screen, and pulls her hands back to jitter awkwardly around her thighs.

"I'm not in a great place in my life, Kono." She rubs her thumbs along the outside seams of her jeans, and Kono tightens her grip in response. "I don't even know if my job will be there when I get back. If I find Wo Fat, and that's a big if, what can I do to bring him down? Am I just looking for--revenge, or whatever, I don't know if that's what it is that's driving me, I just know it hurts. Everything in my life right now hurts."

Kono strokes her hand up, along Jenna's shoulder, tense and leanly muscular, the hard rope of her trapezius. She can feel Jenna breathing. They hang there silently for a moment, and then Jenna says softly, "It's not a place I want to invite anybody into, Kono."

"What if I ask?" Kono says. "What if I invite myself?"

Jenna shakes her head, but her shoulders fall just slightly under Kono's palm.

"Jenna," Kono says, "this is me, inviting myself. Let me in." She rubs at the muscle, hoping she's not wrong, hoping it's going to give. And it does. Jenna relaxes into Kono's hand.

"Okay," she says, "okay." She turns, gets a hand on Kono's waist, and then they're holding each other, sort of slow-dancing, hips bumping the computer on each sway; but it's good. Jenna is a couple inches shorter than Kono, and her hair under Kono's nose smells like strawberry shampoo, which makes Kono feel a lot better about the whole thing. Strawberry shampoo, sweet and frivolous. Jenna wiggles a hand up under Kono's shirt, onto the small of her back, and yes, Kono thinks, they're starting something here: they are definitely, definitely starting a thing.  It's a really good feeling. 


End file.
